Madison Maxey Is Building A Business On The Frontier Of High-Tech Fabric

In 2013, Madison Maxey, 23, became the first fashion designer to win a $100,000 Thiel fellowship, set up by billionaire PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel to fund young people who want to pursue entrepreneurial ventures instead of going to college. She had already dropped out of Parsons School of Design after one semester and started a company making women’s blazers. Her proposal to Thiel involved her interest in making patterns for clothing using 3-D modeling, which would cut down on production costs because the patterns would have fewer seams. She has since founded a Brooklyn-based company called Loomia, which infuses fabric with electronic circuitry. One of her projects: a collaboration with Google and fashion designer Zac Posen on a dress shot through with multicolored LED lights. Maxey was on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Art & Style list last year. She’s presenting at this year’s Forbes Under 30 Summit in Boston, where she'll display a one-of-a-kind prototype garment she made for the event. In this interview, which has been edited and condensed, she describes the path that led to her pioneering work in high tech fabric.

Susan Adams: Tell me about your background.

Madison Maxey: I’m from San Diego and moved to New York when I was 18 and haven’t left since. My mom is a flight attendant and my dad was an aerospace engineer at Northrup Grumman who loved to make things.

Adams: What was your first entrepreneurial project?

Maxey: In high school I did a Kickstarter for a project that I entered in a competition for global designers. I wanted to make a garment collection inspired by a shipwreck, which started in pristine condition and became totally tattered over time. I raised $700 but I didn’t win.

Adams: You went to Parsons to study fashion design. Why did you only stay for a semester?

Maxey: I wanted to make women’s blazers using leftover materials. A woman who’d given me money on Kickstarter gave me $4,000 to finance the company. I thought I could move faster on the project if I left school.

Adams: What happened to that venture?

Maxey: It didn’t turn into a company. At the time I was also working at a company called General Assembly that offers classes on programming and digital marketing related to startups. I fell in love with entrepreneurship and I wanted to bring my love of technology and apparel together.

Adams: What project did you finance with the Thiel fellowship?

Maxey: I had the concept of making software that would create patterns using a process called texture mapping for animation. I wanted to make a pattern that would be like a skin for a 3-D model, which would have only one or two seams. The process would mean you could make a prototype or produce a product with lower manufacturing costs.

Adams: What did you do with the $100,000 in Thiel funds?

Maxey: I was talking to garment manufacturers and factories, asking, is this something you would use? But I realized I’d need more of a reputation in the industry to change something as fundamental as pattern making. So I started this company called The Crated. We just rebranded it as Loomia. We focus on the intersection of technology and design.

Adams: What does Loomia make?

Maxey: So far we’ve been selling prototyping services in our studio to produce products that companies can test with customers, or use for marketing. An example is a smart garment like a jacket or sweater heated by electronic circuits woven into the fabric, which can respond to the wearer’s body temperature. Our customers have included Google, Flextronics, TopShop and VF Corporation.

Adams: What was the first project you did at The Crated?

Maxey: I started off with an arts residency at the School of Visual Arts. I was looking at what would happen if the soft goods products you owned could do many things. We used a material called shape memory alloy wire. It’s a biphasic material that changes shape when you send electricity through it.

Adams: Did that turn into a project that your company pursued?

Maxey: We did a research project for the Man Vehicle Lab at MIT. They were building a second-generation spacesuit.

Adams: How did your early projects shape your company?

Maxey: After building prototypes for companies, we realized there were a lot of enabling technologies missing that could produce these smart soft goods products. I started developing materials and I developed a stretchable conductive ink that you could put on fabrics. The great thing about a studio is you can either take on or turn down work. I also went to San Francisco for five months and did an artist’s residence at Autodesk.

Adams: What did you produce at Autodesk?

Maxey: I wanted to do a study of digital fabrication for electronic textiles. I built a machine that could print conductive materials onto textiles.

Adams: How did you finance your company once your fellowship money ran out?

Maxey: We took on investment at the beginning of this year. We also generated profits last year from the business. But we used the money we raised to develop a product and get it to market, rather than using the revenue we’d generated. Financially it made more sense for cash flow.

Adams: Can you describe the product?

Maxey: We’re making materials that function like a circuit board for smart soft goods products. We’re not making it for one client. It’s a product we’re going to sell on the Internet. We’re launching it at the beginning of next year.

Adams: What sort of customers will want to buy it and how might they use it?

Maxey: Soft goods product manufacturers, especially ones with innovation labs. Iit could be used to make safer work gloves that can give you feedback about the things that you’re touching. If you’re touching a dangerous surface you can get feedback about that. Or you could use it for a consumer product. Right now I wake up to an alarm on my phone. It’s loud and annoying. Maybe your mattress could wake you up by shaking you.

Adams: Would these products be very expensive?

Maxey: Companies that sell soft goods products traditionally make one-time sales. But if you can put intelligence into any of these products and charge for what you’re providing, not just for the product, it could open up new revenue streams for these companies. With many costs rising in China, making cheaper stuff isn’t the way to make money. It’s making innovative stuff, being able to introduce higher-margin products that are more useful.

In February 2018, I took on a new job managing and writing Forbes' education coverage. I'd spent the previous two years on the Entrepreneurs team, following six years writing for the Leadership channel. My mission with education is to explore the intersection of education ...